Kant: Political Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought) by Immanuel Kant

Author:Immanuel Kant [Kant, Immanuel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1991-01-25T00:00:00+00:00

C

Indirectly, i.e. in so far as he takes the duty of the people upon himself, the supreme commander has the right to impose taxes upon the people for their own preservation, e.g. for the care of the poor, for foundling hospitals and church activities, or for what are otherwise known as charitable or pious institutions.

For the general will of the people has united to form a society which must constantly maintain itself, and to this end, it has subjected itself to the internal power of the state so as to preserve those members of the society who cannot do so themselves. The nature of the state thus justifies the government in compelling prosperous citizens to provide the means of preserving those who are unable to provide themselves with even the most rudimentary necessities of nature. For since their existence itself is an act of submission to the protection of the commonwealth and to the care it must give them to enable them to live, they have committed themselves in such a way that the state has a right to make them contribute their share to maintaining their fellow citizens. This may be done by taxing the citizens’ property or their commercial transactions, or by instituting funds and using the interest from them—not for the needs of the state (for it is rich), but for the needs of the people. The contributions should not be purely voluntary (for we are here concerned only with the rights of the state as against the subjects), they must in fact be compulsory political impositions. Some voluntary contributions such as lotteries, which are made from profit-seeking motives, should not be permitted, since they create greater than usual numbers of poor who become a danger to public property.

It might at this point be asked whether the poor ought to be provided for by current contributions so that each generation would support its own members, or by gradually accumulated capital funds and pious foundations at large (such as widows’ homes, hospitals, etc.). Funds must certainly not be raised by begging, which has close affinities with robbery, but by lawful taxation. The first arrangement (that of current contributions) must be considered the only one appropriate to the rights of the state, for no-one who wishes to be sure of his livelihood can be exempt from it. These contributions increase with the numbers of poor, and they do not make poverty a means of support for the indolent (as is to be feared in the case of pious foundations), so that the government need not impose an unjust burden on the people.

As for the support of children abandoned through need or through shame (and who may even be murdered for such reasons), the state has a right to make it a duty for the people not to let them perish knowingly, even although they are an unwelcome increase to the state’s population. But whether this can justly be done by taxing bachelors of both sexes (i.e. single persons of

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